The present invention relates to a device for squashing down waste such as household, industrial, hospital and other waste. It is essentially designed for compacting waste at its place of production, such as in the consumer's home.
To facilitate the handling of household refuse and waste, from the consumer's home to the waste sorting and processing center, compacting devices have been put forward: these enable a considerable amount of space to be saved, particularly when it comes to dry waste such as recyclable containers (plastic bottles, boxes, food cans, etc.). Compacting also facilitates waste collection simply because the waste takes up less space and therefore needs less frequent pick-ups. This in turn saves money for the community as a whole (fewer waste-collecting containers to be handled, faster turn-around of dumpsters, reduction of noise pollution, etc.). Compacting is also of great benefit to the user since it means that his garbage cans take up less space and they do not need taking out so often.
To this end, there are devices which use pressure to compress the waste: they generally use a piston or a moving plate to reduce the volume inside a container in which the waste is put. This prior art is illustrated particularly by:
FR-A-2 184 941, which discloses a household refuse compressing system which comprises a container containing the waste to be compacted, in which a pressure plate can move vertically, under the action of pressure, to press against the waste. This is a relatively complicated device having the major drawback of requiring a heavy and voluminous lid to contain the pressure plate actuating means.
The prior art also includes devices which use vacuum systems to compact, in the home, by negative pressure, waste contained in the receptacles. This technique is capable of compressing most recyclable packaging materials, the vacuum storage of waste also being favorable from the point of view of odors since it greatly limits bacterial growth and the ageing of leftover food. Vacuum compression also causes packaging materials to collapse tightly together, optimizing the volume without causing any difficulty for the sorters at the sorting center because as soon as the vacuum is relaxed the packaging materials fall apart naturally.
For the prior art of this technique, particular mention may be made of:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,899,967, which relates to a refuse compacter of the flexible bellows type. When negative pressure is applied inside the compacter, the bellows close up accordion-fashion and compact the refuse. The problem with this kind of solution is that only a small waste compression ratio can be achieved with such a compacter. The reason for this is that as the waste is being compacted it gets in between the bellows and thus impedes compression. Furthermore, a lot of the energy that could be obtained from the negative pressure is wasted in raising the bellows, the base and the waste itself. Another disadvantage is that if food cans are trapped between the bellows, the bellows may be damaged, putting the compacter out of service.
EP-A-0 989 059, which consists in fitting, to the upper opening of a disposable bag in which the waste is placed, a suction hood connected to a vacuum system. This is a mechanically simple device but does require a certain amount of handling by the user in the home (fitting and removing the suction hood) and has the further disadvantage of making direct use of disposable bags which by definition are flimsy and are likely to split when exposed directly to a vacuum, which may result in the bag being torn due to the presence of hard parts on the waste to be compacted (such as food cans, the corners of cardboard boxes etc.). In any case, the efficiency of this prior-art device is very poor.
Taking this prior art as its starting point, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device that will compact household waste in the home by compressing it using the action of negative pressure, this device being simple and uncomplicated in both design and use and easy to maintain, and not having the drawbacks of the approaches of the prior art and yet also being very much more efficient.